Andrew Swanston

Andrew Swanston writes suspense fiction shaped by his interest in early modern England, politics, codes, and contested loyalty. The King’s Exile is the second Thomas Hill novel, following The King’s Spy and preceding The King’s Return. Penguin identifies the sequence, Transworld imprint, and 2013 publication; Goodreads separately documents the same series position and editions. The story begins in 1648 when bookseller and cryptographer Thomas Hill is arrested after publishing a political pamphlet and transported to Barbados. Events on the island soon connect with England’s renewed civil conflict and Cromwell’s attempt to control the colony. Swanston uses Hill’s skill with ciphers to place an ordinary tradesman inside military and diplomatic struggles without turning him into a conventional soldier. The King’s Exile develops as a historical thriller that expands the series beyond England, linking print culture, forced displacement, colonial rivalry, and coded intelligence during a volatile change of government.